America is one of the Four Parts of the World personified as female figures by Cesare Ripa in the Iconologia, an illustrated dictionary of abstract concepts that was very widely used by artists from the early seventeenth century. America is usually represented wearing a head-dress of feathers, holding a bow in one hand and arrow in the other, at her feet is a severed head pierced by an arrow. Her animal is the caiman, a Central American reptile resembling the crocodile.